Darker Space (15 page)

Sounded typical of the military.

“Chris
hated
it. We’d go for drinks afterward, and he’d spend hours ranting about it.
‘There has to be a third option, Cam! There’s always a third option!’
” He smiled at the memory. “Am I surprised he’s the guy who’s gunning to learn to communicate with the Faceless, instead of just thinking our only options are attack or defend? Hell, no.”

“Those options do kind of suck,” I pointed out. “We’re only alive today because the Faceless didn’t give enough of a fuck to finish the job the first time.”

Sometimes I thought that was what rankled most with the military. Not that we were defenseless against the Faceless, but that we were insignificant. Which made negotiating with them pretty pointless too. Kai-Ren’s treaty had been unprecedented, even if he’d only done it to stop the rest of the Faceless wasting resources on swatting insects.

I wrinkled my nose. “So, when I was drugged up on amytal, I might have told Chris I didn’t like him.”

Cam smiled. “He mentioned that, yeah. Apparently you also owe him a pair of boots.”

“Fuck that. He earns more than me.”

Cam laughed softly and read for a little longer. Then his thumb stilled. “Shit. Brady, they were onto us for a while.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean four months ago we started scoring higher than we should have with the flash cards. And there’s something here from three months ago about our scans showing increased brain activity in the right parahippocampal gyrus. What’s that?”

I snorted. “Um. Trainee medic, remember, then mop jockey? Way above my pay grade, Cam.”

“Well, we both got it at the same time. So maybe the connection was coming back before we were aware of it.”

“Okay,” I said. “But
why
did it come back? And how did Lucy get it? She never even had any contact with the Faceless.”

“Neither did you at first,” Cam reminded me. “Except with me.”

“You think it’s like a virus? Like living with us made her catch it too?”

“Maybe.” He sighed. “Jesus, I can’t even pretend to understand it.”

I closed my eyes.
A part of me has missed this.

I felt his surprise jolt through both of us before he answered:
“Me too.”

I smiled and almost dozed off while his fingers played over my scalp. Then a frisson of unease shivered through him, through me, through
us.

“Holy shit.”

I opened my eyes. “What?”

Cam shifted, pushing me off him to sit up. He thrust the tablet at me. “Does that mean what I think it means?”

I took the tablet and studied the screen. “These are medical records.” I didn’t recognize four out of the five names, though. I recognized the fifth: Captain Chris Varro. And a week ago, all of these guys had signed medical waivers to get injected with…with blood. Blood that had been taken from me and Cam. “Fuck me.”

Chris Varro was serious about wanting to talk to the Faceless. And if he couldn’t learn their language by listening to it… If it really was like a virus, what better way to catch it than this?

“That’s fucking
insane
,” I said. “Did he tell you he was doing that?”

Cam shook his head. “But it makes sense.”

“It makes sense until these dickheads infect everyone in their families, like we did with Lucy, and before you know it, the entire population of the planet is connected to the Faceless!”

“Shit.” Cam closed his eyes. “Brady, shit.”

“Fucking assholes,” I muttered, gripping the tablet tightly. “Why would they mess with something like that?”

Cam didn’t answer. He only opened his eyes again, and they were shining with tears. “Brady…”

“I know!” I wanted to throw the tablet and smash it against the wall. I wanted to kick and scream and yell until I couldn’t anymore. I wished Chris Varro were here so I could punch him in his stupid fucking face. “I know!”

Because without even knowing it, Chris Varro had forced our hands.

We had to tell them.

We had to tell the military about Lucy.

Chapter Nine

Despite the orange armbands on our uniforms that marked us as prisoners, it turned out Cam and I were allowed to leave our room that evening. We had a marine following a few steps behind, but he was easy enough to ignore.

“What is this asshole even doing?”
I asked Cam as I bashed the side of a vending machine to try to get a chocolate.

“Probably making sure we’re not going to get into the Core and sabotage the reactor.”

My jaw dropped.
“Are you serious?”

“Unfortunately, yes.”
The corners of his mouth tugged up in a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “You’d have more luck with that machine if you actually put money in it.”

I bashed the side of it again. “Look, this one’s ready to fall.”

“Brady.” He shook his head slightly and gestured at the glowering marine. “Really?”

I rolled my eyes. “What are they gonna do, LT?”

Cam glanced at the MP.

“I could put you in the fucking brig,” he muttered.

“Right you are, Sergeant.” I showed him my palms. “I’ll behave. LT, can I have a dollar? I’ll make it up to you later.”

Cam sighed and shook his head, but gave me a dollar and I ate my chocolate as we headed to the med bay. We got a few curious looks on our way, and once I thought someone said my name, but when I turned around, I couldn’t pick any face I knew out of the bunch of guys passing.

We split up at the medical bay.

“Don’t leave here without an escort,” the marine said.

“Yes, Sarge.”

Cam flashed me a smile. He was on his way to meet with Commander Leonski and some assholes from intel. And once he told them about Lucy, any small freedoms we were enjoying this afternoon would be severely fucking curtailed.

“Good luck, Cam.”

I watched him leave before I stepped inside. There was a particular smell about the medical bay, one I’d never really got out of my nostrils. Cold air, antiseptic, and stale cigarette smoke.

“Jesus fucking Christ! Brady Garrett!” Doc might have been several stitches into some poor recruit’s gaping laceration, but that didn’t stop him from downing tools and engulfing me in a hug that squeezed the breath right out of me. “I heard a rumor you were on your way here.” He gripped me by the shoulders and held me at arm’s length while he looked me up and down. “I hoped it wasn’t true.”

“That makes two of us, Doc.”

He fixed his narrow stare on me. “I can imagine.”

I shrugged. “Yeah, well. You know the brass. Not happy unless they’re fucking me over somehow.”

Doc barked out a laugh. “Well, you haven’t changed, have you, son? Still a recalcitrant little shit.”

“A bad attitude—”

“Is better than no attitude at all,” he finished for me and cuffed me on the back of the head. “Idiot.”

The recruit on the examination table stared at us owl-eyed, cradling his injured hand in his lap.

I leaned against the wall and watched as Doc stripped his gloves off, pulled on a new pair, and turned back to the kid’s hand. The kid’s uninjured hand was filthy. He was a mechanic, probably. He had calluses, worn-down nails, and scrapes on his knuckles. He probably spent half his life up to his elbows in the guts of the Shitboxes. The skin of his injured hand was stained yellow with antiseptic.

Doc’s sutures were neat and precise, the thread tugging at the kid’s flesh as Doc worked the needle.

“You keeping up with your training?” he asked me as he worked.

“I’m a mop jockey these days, Doc.”

Doc grimaced and glared at me. “Bullshit!”

I shrugged.

Doc turned back to the kid’s hand. “Bandage,” he growled.

I picked it up from the tray and held it out for him. He tore the wrapping open. While he worked, I took the opportunity to inspect Doc’s sutures. The recruit’s cut was about an inch and a half long, extending from the base of his thumb into the fleshy part of his hand. For a moment I actually felt nostalgic or something. I’d been a good trainee medic, Doc’s best, and a part of me had liked being useful. Sure, so another part of me had only hung around in the med bay because the food here was better than in the mess, and I’d also been helping myself to the occasional drugs to trade on the station black market, but mostly I’d liked the work. And I’d liked the way Doc maybe even believed I was better than everyone else thought.

He wrapped the gauze around the recruit’s hand.

“Keep it dry,” he told him. “And keep it clean.”

The kid nodded. “Yes, sir.”

Doc clapped him on the shoulder. “And come back tomorrow so I can check it’s healing.”

“Yes, sir.” The kid slunk off, poking his bandage. So much for keeping it clean.

I held up my own hands. “Wanna take a look, Doc?”

Doc grumbled something under his breath. He was probably due for a smoke break. “What’ve you been punching this time?”

“A wall,” I said, sitting on the edge of the exam table. “And a lieutenant.”

Doc raised his hairy eyebrows. “Which lieutenant?”

“Mine.”

Doc put on a fresh pair of gloves and inspected my right hand. He took a little longer with the left, curling my fingers carefully into a painful fist. “That happen often?”

“Jesus, Doc, no! It was kind of extenuating circumstances, and I already feel like shit for it, okay?”

“Good. You should.”

I knocked the heels of my boots against the edge of the examination table. “I know.”

Doc dropped my hand. “Nothing seems to be broken. I’ll give you some anti-inflammatories.”

“I figured,” I said.

Doc gestured, and I followed him toward his office. Couldn’t help looking toward the quarantine rooms as we passed the air lock. Last time I’d been in there, it had been to cut Cam out of the Faceless pod. And then I’d touched him, and my life had never been the same. Neither had my universe.

Something must have shown in my face, because Doc’s customarily gruff expression softened. He pushed open his office door and ushered me inside.

I headed straight for the bookshelf. Traced my fingers down the cracked spines of his books. I heard the rasp of Doc’s lighter behind me and turned around. He surprised me by tossing the pack of cigarettes at me.

I caught the packet against my chest. “Seriously?”

Doc sat down at his desk. “You look like you could use one.”

I took a seat across from him. “Yeah? Is that your medical opinion?”

He snorted.

The cigarette felt good, though. Made my hands shake and my head spin after so long without. The first few drags tasted like shit, but then things got rapidly better. “Yeah, I needed that.”

“You doing okay, son?”

“I thought I was.” I took another drag. “Up until about a week ago.”

“So you and Rushton are still…” He made a vague gesture with his hand.

“Fucking?”

Doc’s bushy eyebrows shot up. “I was going to say cohabiting.”

I bet he wasn’t.

“Yeah. We had a place. With Lucy, my sister. She’s with Cam’s parents right now, so, you know.” I shrugged.

“So what?”

“So I guess that all worked out okay, then, right?” I turned my head slightly to look at the bookshelf, to see if I could spot
The Myth of Sisyphus
, with that big red rock on the front cover.

“Hell, Brady.” Doc’s voice was low. “That’s not fair.”

Well, neither was life.

I rubbed my forehead, trying to ease the tension that was doing its best to build into a headache. “I was better off before I got any dumb ideas about how maybe one day I’d get off this fucking station and have a chance at a decent life.”

Doc was silent for a long moment.

“And now…and now our connection’s back, and so are the fucking
Faceless
.” My voice broke, and the rest of me almost followed.

He sighed. “Shit, Brady. What can I do?”

I passed my hand over my stinging eyes. “I dunno. You could try leaving the drug dispensary unlocked?”

Doc’s mouth twitched in what was maybe supposed to be a smile. “Well, anything apart from that.”

There was nothing, and we both knew it. The silence drew out.

Doc spun a pen on his desk. “So, Wade’s dead.”

My jaw dropped. “Are you serious?”

“Hanged himself. A few months ago now.”

I gave myself a second to figure out how I felt about that. Turns out I didn’t even need that long. “Good. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.”

I only wished he had a grave I could dance on.

Doc huffed, then slid his desk drawer open and pulled out a bottle. “Drink?”

“Fuck, yeah.”

He twisted the cap off the bottle.

* * * *

When Cam and the marine came back for me, my boots were a little bit wobbly.

“Painkillers,” Doc said gruffly and patted me on the back to send me on my way.

I might have stumbled slightly.

“Are you
drunk,
Brady?”

“Little bit, yeah.”
I patted my pocket to check I still had Doc’s cigarettes. Doc looked out for me.

I was still buzzed when we made it back to our room and the marine locked us in.

“So here’s the deal,” Cam said, steering me toward the bed and letting me face-plant on it. “As of now, we’re pretty much quarantined.”

“Figures.” I tried to extract the cigarettes from my pocket. It was trickier than it should have been. Then I realized I was trying with my swollen hand. I rolled onto my back and switched hands. “What’re they gonna do with Lucy?”

“I don’t know.” He chewed his bottom lip, and I could feel his worry settle over me. “But we’ll get home, okay? We’ll make this right.”

“Okay.” I stared at the ceiling for a while. “This is probably Doc’s whiskey talking, but I believe you.”

“You do?”

“Yeah.” I sighed. “You always think shit’s gonna work out okay and we’re not gonna get blasted out of the sky, and I think you’re an idiot, but you’ve always been right too. So I’m the real idiot, I guess.”

He lay down beside me. “How much did you have to drink, exactly?”

I fumbled with the pack of cigarettes and finally extracted one. “A bit. A
lot
. I’m probably gonna be sick in the morning.”